1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of automated speech systems and, more particularly, to using an automated speech application environment to automatically provide text-based interactive services.
2. Description of the Related Art
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems are often used to provide automated customer service via a voice channel of a communication network. IVR systems permit routine customer requests to be quickly, efficiently, and automatically handled. When a request is non-routine or when a caller has difficulty with the IVR system, a transfer can be made from the IVR system to a customer service representative. Even when human interactions are needed, the IVR system can obtain necessary preliminary information, such as an account number and a reason for a call, which can ensure callers are routed to an appropriate human agent and to ensure human-to-human interactive time is minimized. Successful use of IVR systems allows call centers to be minimally manned while customers are provided a high level of service with relatively low periods spent in waiting queues.
IVR systems, especially robust ones having natural language understanding (NLU) capabilities and/or large context free grammars, represent a huge financial and technological investment. This investment includes costs for purchasing/leasing and maintaining IVR infrastructure hardware, IVR infrastructure software, and voice applications executing upon this infrastructure. An additional and significant reoccurring cost can relate to maintaining a sufficient number of voice quality channels to handle anticipated call volume. Further, each of these channels consumes an available port of a voice server, which has a limited number of costly ports. Each channel also consumes a quantity of bandwidth needed for establishing a voice quality channel between a caller and the IVR system.
No conventional solution permits this expensive IVR infrastructure to be leveraged to handle customer service interactions over other communications channels, such as a chat channel or an instant messaging channel. Instead, implementing a chat channel using conventional techniques requires a separate investment in a separate infrastructure. That is, new costs for purchasing and maintaining chat infrastructure hardware, chat infrastructure software, and chat applications executing upon this infrastructure are incurred.